


Black Seas of Infinity

by Rebel_Atar



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, Possible Body Horror, eldritch horror, lovecraftian concepts, no smut and I know that's a shock from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebel_Atar/pseuds/Rebel_Atar
Summary: Strange things happen in Jedha city, almost as strange as what dwells in the temple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackice/gifts).



> For the spiritassassin fanwork exchange for Shih-coulda-had-it aka blackice I really hope you like it.
> 
> Thank you to egregiousderp for letting me bounce ideas off of you.
> 
> Thank you to sarahselene for letting me throw excerpts at you when I doubted my writing capabilities.

_We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. ~H.P. Lovecraft_

 

  
Time passes differently in certain parts of the city. Silence falls in these areas, like a breath being held but never released. Weather stops. The birds do not fly. Rodents do not go there. Weeds and flowers judge all that walk the paths through them. Sentients do not speak, they know better. These places belong to the creature.

Wild loth cats appear. More and more winding their way in from the wilds of the mesa to the shelter of the city. Catch them. Catch them quick before they flee. They say it does not like the sound they make when contented and it will keep it’s distance.

They say it bleeds black. Certain species take umbrage to this. Nothing wrong with having black blood, they grumble, or any colour of blood, or no blood at all. A prime example of Humancentrism they say. They are not wrong, but the creature does bleed black and it is not human or any of the other hundreds of species spanning the galaxy. It is not like anything else at all.

Doors that lead to nowhere keep showing up in the more overlooked parts of the city. Sentients ward themselves as they pass. A thousand different motions from a thousand different cultures.

Sometimes the doors are flat against walls. Sometimes they are made of stone, sometimes sticks, sometimes from whatever bits and pieces of rubbish gather around the NiJedha. Always they look ruined, or unfinished, walls half built to support them, the materials they are made from part floating around them, as if they were being assembled and someone stopped half way through. Suspending their supplies in air halfway through drifting into place. The people of Jedha avoid them, tell their children not to stray to close and never, never, go through them, or into them even if they lead only to a wall.

There is only empty space inside of the doors but sometimes they shimmer. Purple and green iridescent and those who have indulged too much in drink or spice swear they can see the stars spiraling out beyond the doorways. Sometimes they are foolish enough to go through. Sometimes they don't come back. Those that do are changed. Sombre. Sober. They dedicate themselves to the force, whatever denomination they prefer but many end up with the Whills.

The Temple of the Kyber is where those of the city go to make offerings and prayers to keep them safe. Safe from what they do not know, outside of those the doorways take the creature has never harmed anyone in memory. It changes things, twists reality around itself. Why would it need to harm physically when it can horrify, when just the sight of its form would reduce your mind to little more than sludge. Where it has passed people cower in fear. They don’t even need to have realised that it has passed just its presence instills a fundamental terror in all in the vicinity.

The Temple of the Kyber is where they go to seek safety from this. If only they knew of the secrets the masters guard so jealously. If only they knew the truth of what the temple holds.

The temple is a fairly closed community. Pilgrims are welcome and the Disciples of the Whills come in droves day after day to pray and pay their respects, and help maintain the faith, and help the people of Jedha and pilgrims alike. Only the Guardians live in the temple. Taught and trained within it’s walls.  
The temple treats its guardians and acolytes with equality, though a certain amount of respect is afforded based on skill level. However to Chirrut Imwe the masters afford an unusual amount of lenience. In contrast to the rest of the temples residents who afford him a large amount of both fear and avoidance. ****


	2. Chapter 2

Baze Malbus cannot remember when he first noticed that his fellows avoided Chirrut, only that he realised in that moment that he had been doing the same though he could not name a reason for it. If anything that made him take more notice of him, made him go out of his way to not avoid Chirrut. His attempts were initially met with frantic looks and shaking heads as he was guided out of his paths to Chirrut.

He did not allow himself to become disheartened by it. Instead he began to observe Chirrut, and the way their peers reacted to Chirrut, more subtly. What he saw confused him. Chirrut was treated with kindness by the masters but given a wide berth by everyone else. Chirrut was seemingly infinitely cheerful but was not permitted to interact with pilgrims.

The more he watched the more he realised something was off. Things tended to disappear around Chirrut only to turn up in the oddest of places a few days later. He was served different meals of things Baze did not recognise but never had to go and get it his food, nor was it brought to him. If Chirrut was in the dining hall the food would be in front of him. You never saw him walking there, entering or leaving. There was never food absent from his plate.

He began to notice odd things out of the corner of his eye. When you looked at Chirrut fully everything seemed normal but if you just caught a glimpse, if you just let your peripheral vision pick him up he looked odd. He would have too many eyes and all in the wrong places, across his cheekbones and down his arms and at the hollow of his throat. If you tried to turn to look at him in these moments your gaze just slid away and when you finally managed to bring it back he looked normal again. Something Baze found singularly aggravating.

Sometimes he would see Chirrut in places he shouldn’t be, or shouldn’t be allowed to be, or should not physically be able to get to but acting there was no where else in Jedha he was supposed to be, acting as though he fitted there perfectly. The masters didn’t even blink when this happened, those who were capable of blinking at least.

Baze started to question the masters. He was a good student, well read and studies, proficient in Zama-shiwo, devout in his beliefs they were willing to listen. At first. When he mentioned Chirrut they became tense and spoke cryptically. When Baze said he could see the shadows behind Chirrut moving they said he must be mistaken. When he asked where Chirrut came from they asked Baze if he knew what it meant to be a Kyber Guardian, if he knew what the Whills were, if he knew what it meant when they said the force guided their order. No matter how he answered they would not say any more on the matter. Not one of them.

When he watched Chirrut fight his mind filled in all the things you would expect to see the fast motions, the totally human body. When Baze concentrates, really concentrates. The way he did for meditation or breathing exercises in Zama-shiwo. He thought he could see the empty sleeve of Chirrut's robe shifting in winds that weren’t there.

For weeks Baze watched, stolen glances out the corner of his eyes before coming to the conclusion that not only was there something odd about Chirrut but there was something people weren't telling him.

"What is he?" Asked Baze, finally breaking the silence on the topic of Chirrut Imwe that his Duan mates seemed decidedly intent on keeping.

"Nothing.” Paratava mumbled back at him before turning away. He wasn't the only one, lots of his classmates were refusing to meet his eyes or actively putting their backs to him.

“You don't just talk about that!” Hissed Mawli and Mulat in a harsh whisper, forever in unison.

One of the Rodian triplets, and Baze always felt guilty that he couldn't tell them apart, glanced sideways at Baze and muttered, “Just, pretend its a man and it can't do anything." Their two siblings nodded in agreement.

What did that mean. Baze was unsettled by the use of the word it. He was almost certain Chirrut went by he. One of the first things they learned about their classmates were their pronouns.   
He glanced over at Chirrut who was sitting on his own off to one side. Baze thought he saw the shadows flickering again. A chill ran down his spine but he shook it off, annoyed. There was no need for his body to start acting as ridiculous as his peers were.

"Just don't make eye contact and you'll be fine." Said Paratava, his lekku twitching slightly out of nervousness.

Baze raised an eyebrow at him in displeasure and turned in his seat to stare, belligerently, directly at Chirrut because he'd had just about enough of not getting any straight answers. There were hushed gasps and the scraping of chairs as everyone not only turned away from Baze but moved away from him too. If he was honest with himself their behaviour was starting to make him angry.

  
Off in the corner of the room the shadows twitched and flickered, warping under the presence of Chirrut Imwe. Such as him was not meant for this plane, and such as him had not existed here for a long, long time. He sighed to himself and focused on his senses, letting them stretch out across the room. Multiple eyes faded in and out of existence. He could not see with any of them, his blindness more than just physical but he could sense so much more. Hear, smell, touch, taste, feel the pressure of the atmosphere, the heat and the lack of humidity, the vibrations of the air, the movement of the moon, the changing mood of his companions, the heartbeat of the city itself.

He had meant to brush over Sona’s workbook. The young Togruta had been especially vicious to both the new initiates and the three eyed crows that gathered around the Uneti tree in the courtyard. Throwing words at the children and stones at the birds. He had meant to warp the ink on her pages until it was overflowing, dripping over the whole workbook and flooding the table, cascading onto the floor. He had meant to make her panic.

He did not.

Chirrut was distracted by the sense of something new. Whereas his peers normally filled whatever room he was in with the thick stench and oppression of fear, or the drugging sedation of ignorance, there was now something brighter. Something heady and rich like spices and tea but soft and fresh like the flowers in the temple gardens. There was care and curiosity, and just the hint of heat that was anger. All of it for him.

Chirrut sat up straighter and honed himself in on this beautiful focus and refreshing scent, he was the center of someone’s attention. Who was that? He was not only focused mentally on Chirrut but it felt like he was staring at him. Nobody stared at him. Nobody even dared look for a moment. He felt something heavy inside him ease and sucked on his lower lip to hide a smile. People didn’t like it when he smiled and he wanted to see just how long this interest in him would hold.


	3. Chapter 3

Baze kept watching Chirrut. He watched him spar and he watched him when they shared classes. Unanswered questions aside you just did not treat people the way everyone seemed intent on treating Chirrut. The masters were nice enough to him, but turned a blind eye to everyone else's behaviour.

It sat badly with Baze. Chirrut was odd, certainly, but he was not cruel or vicious at least as far as Baze could see. He was beginning to get used to the flickering shadows. Sometimes the outline of Chirrut would waver as well. He imagine the others found it unsettling, to Baze it was just interesting.

A couple of weeks into his Chirrut watching Baze looked away for only a moment to find Chirrut had vanished when he looked back. There was tingling sensation in his hands and the air seemed to thicken for a second or two before their was a hot puff of breath on the back of his neck and he turned around to find Chirrut directly behind him and alarmingly close. There had not been enough time for him to move this far, not even if he ran and Chirrut did not seem out of breath. His chest rising and falling in a calming cadence that did not match what Baze knew of human breathing patterns but found remarkably soothing somehow.

He had never been this close to Chirrut. The man did not seem to understand personal space, or he was choosing actively to ignore it.

Up close Baze could see that there was something off about him. If anything he was a little too human. He was a little too desperately pretty and eye-catching.

His grin was just a little too wide and sharp. Baze found himself wondering if Chirrut opened his mouth if it would just keep opening until the top of his head hinged back like a storage chest. He wouldn't have minded knowing the answer but it was the kind of question that seemed rude to ask.

Chirrut’s gaze was slightly off center, looking somewhere over Baze's right ear rather than in his eyes. It was confusing. Sometimes Chirrut’s blindness seemed to be no issue. For all purposes Chirrut acted as though he could see and then there were moments like this.

Chirrut never lost his way, never faltered. Perhaps he saw through the force but it was not for Baze to say such things.

Chirrut did not, in fact, need his eyes. Not any of them but that didn't stop there from being hundreds. He suspected Baze had caught a glimpse of them on occasion but made certain that when he turned back there would only be two. Milky blue and pupil less.

"What are you?" Asked Baze. He might as well be direct.

"I'm one with the force and the force is with me." Said Chirrut, taking care that his lips covered his teeth as he spoke. He didn't want this one to run. This one was different.

Baze sighed in exasperation. "Alright, One With the Force, I'm Baze Malbus."

"I know." Said Chirrut, breath warm and sweet smelling.

Baze blinked at him as he processed that Chirrut knew who he was. “Right.”

Chirrut grinned back at him again. Baze had seen less intimidating grins on things that ate sentients and yet for some reason he didn’t think Chirrut would harm him. If he was that kind of a person he wouldn’t be training to be a guardian after all. He cleared his throat awkwardly, not sure what else to say. Chirrut opened his mouth to say something that would probably be just as mysterious as knowing his name when someone snagged Baze by the arm and steered him off.

“This way Malbus there’s something you need to see.” Paratava said at an increased volume. He then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Don’t worry friend, you’re safe now. I didn’t even see it move, one minute it was just behind you.”

Baze made a confused noise of vague assent and looked back over his shoulder at Chirrut. It might have been Baze’s imagination but he seemed sad.


	4. Chapter 4

It takes Chirrut two days to give in to the urge to speak with Baze Malbus again. He was an interesting man, as far as humans went. He was different, and different compared to the rest of the temple was a good thing as far as Chirrut was concerned.

He let the shadows in his room wrap around him. He wasn’t fond of his room, as much as the temple had worked to accommodate his needs, to make him comfortable. He had space, he had material things but kept up high in one of the spires he was isolated. Only one like Chirrut was ever unleashed on the galaxy at a time, but that did not mean they were meant to survive alone.

He flickered and shuddered and let his mind and senses expand until he was no longer standing in his room in the spire but in the room his morning lessons were scheduled for. He did not attend breakfast, this morning he did not feel the need and it was rare the temple had things that would truly sate his gnawing hunger.

Chirrut settled himself off in a corner and waited for the rest of his duan to finish their breakfasts and file in. He didn’t shutter his senses off the way he normally would, he wanted to know the instant Baze stepped into the room.

When he finally did Chirrut sucked in a breath, tongue flicking behind his teeth as the scent and sense of Baze Malbus filled him up. Once again there was the feeling of light and Chirrut probed at it, twirling fingers and poking with invisible claws until it unfurled itself to him.

He stood and drifted to sit next to Baze instead, he was after all much more interesting than the corner. He plopped himself down next to him and a sense of contentment welled up when Baze merely looked up, blinked at him, and shrugged before going back to setting out workbook and ink.

“The force moves differently around you.” Said Chirrut, affecting a voice soft and sinuous.

“What?” Said Baze. “What do you mean?”

Chirrut grinned at him. An open mouthed grin that once again was just too wide to be natural but this time showed his teeth. Sharp as knives and rows upon rows upon rows of them. With a closed mouth they had fit together so neatly that Baze hadn’t realised how sharp they were or how abundant. With closed teeth they almost looked human. Now with Chirrut’s mouth open they looked like an animal trap designed by someone especially cruel and wicked. The grin showed too much gum. His gums were pink in a way that nothing Baze ever looked at again would be described as such. They embodied the color, the were the concept of the color. Not just his gums, his mouth too, all pink. All on the inside, too, too pink. He says nothing to Baze’s question, just turns towards the front of the room as the master comes in.

It’s after this that people begin to treat Baze differently.

“You’re going to be a wonderful guardian.” They say and pat him on the back with fear in their eyes. Paratava never bothers him again, nor Mawli and Mulat, nor the Rodian triplets. Baze can’t bring himself to say that he minds. Without their interference and snide comments he feels like studying is easier and classes are more pleasant, and he doesn’t have to pretend to like them at meals anymore. It’s actually something of a relief.

Chirrut’s eyes see the fear of the other acolytes. They see all, know all. All fear him and his eyes.

Except for those too young or too new to the temple to notice there is something off about him, and except for Baze.

He watched Baze Malbus smile to himself as he ate a meal uninterrupted with comments on his size, or the quantity he ate, or every other irritating judgement that had been passed over him. Chirrut made the decision that he was going to keep himself close to this man. Who did not know fear, or at least did not seem to feel it.


	5. Chapter 5

The Masters of the Whills were aware that the creature known to them as Chirrut Imwe was capable of many strange and unfathomable things. They knew that this was because it had many strange powers, often seen as dark but not in fact evil, that were drawn from the pure manifestation of the force.

They knew that he was a sacred creature and they were lucky to have the honor of hosting it in their temple. They _presumed_ that the use of his powers was to perpetuate the will of the force in the galaxy on a great cosmic scale.

Chirrut Imwe knew that the use of his powers was an inherent part of his nature. He was them and they were him and they were for whatever most suited him in the moment, though this did not necessarily mean it was not the will of the force. At this particular moment his powers were most suited to allowing him into Baze Malbus’s room to watch him sleep.

He had been sitting next to Baze in their classes, sensing him during meals and sneaking into his room for close to a month now. Baze still stared at him, still did not bat an eye at Chirrut’s presence, still did not produce even a single instance of fear. He still smelled sweet and spicy, he still felt light and fresh. His presence in the force still unfurled for Chirrut and he suspected, or perhaps more accurately he hoped, that it may soon begin to reach out to Chirrut’s own presence.

Chirrut sighed to himself and leant over Baze. He flicked out his tongue, half as wide as a human’s but just as thick. It was much, much longer and should not have been able to fit into the size of mouth he had. It was forked at the end. He licked over Baze’s forehead, hoping to deliver pleasant dreams and relishing the taste and tingle on his tongue. Then he tucked him in with unseen limbs in shapes not known to sentients anywhere. A final tendril flicked over the covers to smooth them out.   
He smiled, small and gentle and not the grin that threatened to break his face, and then slithered into the comforting darkness beneath Baze’s bed, letting it drag him out and into the city.  
During the day he passed for human if he was ever in the city. People could see him under the light of their systems sun and Chirrut made a conscious effort to keep his appearance under control. Even more of an effort than he made in the temple. If he kept his mouth shut, or managed to open it without grinning at the very least. If he kept most of his eyes hidden and closed, as they were not doing him much good anyway. Then he could pass for human.  
At night when most of the city slept and those that didn’t stayed indoors or travelled in large groups to keep themselves safe. At night when the darkness fell over almost all of Jedha and NaJedha’s looming presence on the horizon painted the city in wavelengths of sound and light and force that most sentients could not detect. At night was when Chirrut let himself free, his form unbound, and fell upon NiJedha.

People shivered where he passed them by. Though he still kept himself out of sight. They fear him because he is the unknown, the vast stretching cosmos, that which binds their universe wove him together from its strands and memories. His like were not meant to be looked on by sentients and those that see him cannot comprehend what they look upon. No mind is large enough to contain his truth without succumbing to madness or decaying into incoherence and leaving its host a drooling mindless mass.

He made mischief at night. Free of consequence. Whipped it up out of the sands of the desert and sculpted it into wicked and fun. Carvings in unknown tongues wrapped around fallen walls and abandoned buildings. Long dead trees burst into full flower or fruit. Seeds of plants long since extinct to Jedha were carved out of the sunken depths of long dead river beds and scattered across the scant gardens in the city. Then with a exhale of too sweet breath they sank deep roots and began life anew.  
Once he was done with the city he sank deep beneath it, to the rocky homes of underground streams and the rich kyber pools in which he basked and drank his fill till even in his human guise his stomach and lips would faintly glow.

In the morning, when the guardians and guardians in training attended morning prayers with disciples and pilgrims alike rumours circulated of an otherworldly horror creeping about in the dark. Chirrut failed utterly at not looking smug.

Baze Malbus rolled his eyes at him in exasperation, trust Chirrut to cause havoc in the night. He couldn’t help but find his eyes drawn to faintly glowing lips and wonder what Chirrut had actually done and why no one else seemed capable of drawing the obvious connection.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little snapshot into the day to day, or should I say night to night of Chirrut.

Chirrut spent several nights over the passing weeks lurking in the darkness underneath Baze Malbus’ bed. It was convenient for him to visit with Baze before and after his excursions on the nights that he went into the city. This was by no means every night.

 

It was comfortable in Baze’s room. With the solid heat of Baze seeping through the bed above him it was comforting. Chirrut sighed and spread himself out beneath the bed to better soak up the warmth and peace from the sleeping man. He had no intention of going into the city tonight. 

 

The Jedhan nights were turning even colder, despite the perpetual cold of the moon. Summer had slipped languorously into autumn and autumn was hardly lingering at all. At least by Chirrut’s reckoning. He had felt much deeper cold than this. The deep and bitter cold of the cosmos that infected every cell, every atom until you knew nothing but cold. The pure darkness and near unending cold that stretched between the stars. 

 

Chirrut had flitted out there in the dark, formless, shapeless, between every atom of matter and every grain of knowledge until called to form. Called away from the others. Called away from the cold. Now he sought out warmth whenever he could.

 

Not the warmth of a star up close. Volatile and destructive. The warmth of a star, of a sun, from the surface of the world. Bringing life and light. Bringing gentle warmth for him to soak into every fathomless crevice. 

 

No he was much happier here in the warm, and it was nice to be near to Baze. 

 

He rippled beneath the bed and felt Baze shift above him, turning over in his sleep. Then he heard a huff that sounded much less sleepy.

 

“Stop it.” Said Baze.

 

Chirrut stayed silent.

 

“Chirrut. I  _ know _ that’s you.” 

 

Chirrut coalesced himself into something more pleasant looking, at least from the shoulders up, and poked a human looking head out from beneath the bed. “You can see me?” He asked.

 

Baze sighed. “I just know.”

 

Chirrut hummed happily and the edges of his form shivered, sending echoes of blue and purple to halo his shape. “The force must be with you then.”

 

“I wish that sleep would also be with me.” Baze said, huffing and flopping over from his back and onto his side again.

 

Chirrut let out a hiss. Baze thought he probably meant it to sound like a sigh but it was more like the noise plastene-floats, often carried by children at festivals, made when they had a puncture. 

 

“May the force guide your sleep then.” Said Chirrut, and even in the pitch black of Jedhan night Baze was sure the room around him warped and the air thickened. Then the tingling presence he knew as Chirrut Imwe was gone. Despite this being what he asked for the darkness felt a lot less comfortable now.

 

Chirrut slithered through the eaves of the temple before finally settling himself in the kitchens, hidden beneath one of the large hybrid ovens that were used to feed the temples wards. There was a residual warmth that emanated from it for hours after use and he had often found himself curled beneath it in the past. He had not felt the need to since meeting Baze. He stretched out his consciousness again, searching out through the city and the mesa for anything that would register as a threat to the temple. He would stay here, searching until the prayer bells sounded the start of the next day.


	7. Chapter 7

The kyber called out to him. Clear as the crystals he had never seen but knew so, so well. Their song was beautiful. It calmed and soothed Chirrut. It lifted him up  to euphoric heights and it showed him the hidden secrets of the galaxies. Yes, galaxies. For there are more than this one, so many more. Far, far beyond the outer rim where no one has the courage to venture or a ship that will travel far enough for what else is out there.

 

He flitted about the caves when he had free days. Mapping the mazes of tunnels that were part natural and part man made as the ancient monks mined their way down in search of veins of kyber. Better to honor. Better to guard.

 

Some tunnels were just made up of little seams, cropping out of the walls in small clusters here and there. Others were covered, walls and ceilings. Towering stalagmites of crystal shooting up from the floor or large, sharp points of stalactites jutting out of the walls and ceiling. Be careful wandering through, monks and entities like Chirrut alike, unless one were to fall.

 

The cavern Chirrut had chosen to float about in today was part of a gigantic unearthed geode. Curved walls and ceiling covered in crystals of varying sizes but only part of the floor had been dug out to reveal what lay further below. It was doubtful the temple would ever excavate further. These days their policy was to leave the kyber in peace except for the small crystals given to those crafting the weapons that were part of ascending to their seventh duan.

 

The kyber resonated, in tune with the force and in tune with Chirrut. It did not judge him, or fear him, or shun him in misguided respect. It hummed soft cadences that soothed the shivering edges of his consciousness, so often stretched too thin. It was welcoming, and peaceful. 

 

It was delicious.

  
  
  


It was Baze Malbus’ duty on this day to check on the kyber caverns deep beneath the temple. He was to look for any loose crystals, seen as gifted to the temple by the force for whatever use the masters would put them to. He carried a lantern with him to light the way, although the kyber did sometimes glow on its own, and his hands were wrapped in soft plastene gloves.

 

The gloves were supposedly to protect him from any sharp shards of kyber but he deeply suspected they were really to make sure the crystals were not treated roughly. It was not the first time he had been given this task, far enough along in his duans and diligent enough to be trusted.

 

He did not expect the sight that greeted him when he reached the Great Cavern. 

 

Chirrut Imwe, pressed face first against a wall of crystals, impractically long and flexible tongue wrapped and knotted around a good section of the wall. His hands tugging at a section of his own tongue.

 

He appeared to be stuck.

 

Baze knew this sight should be horrifying. Something so obviously unnatural and unexplainable in front of him. There was no logical way Chirrut’s tongue, which appeared a good thirteen foot in length including where it was double wrapped and knotted, to fit inside of Chirrut’s body let alone just his mouth.

 

He felt his lips twitch. The crystals hummed and more and more twinkled to glowing life across the cavern, illuminating Chirrut more fully until Baze could no longer stifle his laughter. He laughed until his sides hurt and the tears were streaming down his face at the sheer absurdity of it all. Ended up bent double with it.

 

Ī͇͉ͫt̯́̒'͇̩̩͎̮͕̉̋̉s̬͑̾̌ͤ̋ͨ̏ ͚̿͊̃͋̓̇n͓̙͎͓̠͇͕ͦo̻̟̯̗̼̻̥͑̊̉ͣ͗t̿̏ͣͧ̌̔ ̻̟͈̩̟͉f̹̮̦̾͋͐̅u͎̟̜͙̙̜͂ͫ̓nͧn̻͎ͬͦ̂̽͌ẙ̖̼̯̮

 

The words appeared in his mind without going anywhere near his ears. There was no way Chirrut could have managed a coherent sentence with his face split in half and his tongue in a knot anyways. They just dropped into place in perfect little syllables in his head. Except that they weren’t perfect. They were twisted and odd and made his mind slide sideways in a manner that Chirrut’s voice never had. It was similar to how it felt to try and look at Chirrut when you didn’t want to except that he definitely wanted Baze to hear him. The words bypassed sound and knowledge and his brain’s ability to process anything and just slid directly into his consciousness.

 

Baze gasped for breath. “Yes-yes it is.” He tried to pull himself together again, took one look at the eye staring out grumpily at him from Chirrut’s neck and cracked up again. “Oh my  _ force _ !” He managed to eke out in between gulping down air. “How did you even  _ manage  _ that!”

 

Chirrut bristled. It sent a sickly yellow flashing through the kyber points for a moment and Baze raised an eyebrow at him. Baze tried desperately to get his breath back and his composure to the extent that he could form a reasonable sentence again.

 

“Can’t you...um...do whatever it is you do where you show up unexpectedly. To get out of that.” 

 

Chirrut grumbled and the shadows around him thrashed in what Baze would almost call a sheepish manner. The crystals glittered indigo with iridescent pink and the natural glow of the cavern shrunk inward. Baze shivered as a chill ran through him, heart beating hard from more than just laughter for a moment. His body recognising a moment that should have his instincts screaming flight if Baze were any less in control of himself. Zama-shiwo taught many things and body mastery, whilst not completed until reaching the seventh duan, was part of it. Laughter and joy were not discouraged, irrational fear was. Baze considered most of his body’s reactions in regards to Chirrut irrational. He had every intention of ignoring this one along with the others.

 

N̬̥̰̥̱͖͑̊͛o̻̫͊͊͆t̄ͭ̆̾̈́̆̍ ̦͖̹̞ͨ̍a̲͙̬͌ͬ̋̈́r̥o̱͚͉̠̠̫ͫ͑̓͊ͅu̼̝̩̠̯̗͂͂̎ͤ͒ͩ̽n̜̬͚̯͙̻̾̏̓̌d͂̾̃̐̾̒ ̑̀͐̈t̲̳̊̾̍̚h̩̻̄͊̃̋ͭͥ̓e̳͈̮̫ ̗̾͑ͮͮ̚cͥͥͨ̋ṛ̹̺̜̺̻̩̆ͯ̅̌̅ͧy̙̲̲͂̃̿̌̇s͇͇̊̒̓̎̃ͥ̈́t̰̰̜͈̜͙̼a̮̐̈́̈́̏̓̄l̟̭̹ͮ̿ͨͮ̿͂ͥͅs̼̝̪̥͗ͨ̐ͩ͊̽ͩ.̬̙̪̠̌͛̔͗̽͒ͩ

 

“I’m sorry?” Said Baze, shaking his head at the ringing in his ears that accompanied that particular sentence.

 

Chirrut sighed, it was a worryingly wet sound. Almost like the sucking of a wound when a blade was removed. 

 

T̹ͪh͉̩e̘̱͕̬̳̖ͧ̊ͧͣͅy͈̳̥̹͖̣ͬ́͆ͅ ͇̖̪͙̰̒ͩ͊m͚͚̰a̱̖̲k̼͎̗̓̌̚e͈̪̲̩̳̒ͣͪ͋͛̃̾ ̖̬̘̣̞̮͒́͒ͥ̑͑̐t̓h̙̍ͩͪ̽i̠͔̰̻̞̠̋̔̽̽n̙̻̰͐̌́ͫͬ͐̈́g̥̝̻̲̰͛̽̔͋ͮs͈̘̥͕̦̥͒ ̇d̩̗̥̿ͮͯi̖̭͑̈́̓͗̽fͫͤ̑ͣ͗̚f̞̩ͣ͊ͣ̿ͭi͇͈̥̓͒̎̉c̯̬̤͉͇̐͌̔ů̹̯̆̅̈́̓l̽ͯ̏t̼̮̯͂͒̂̀̈́̎̊.̝͛ͫ̾̆̚̚

 

“I imagine they make things very difficult when you’re knotted around them.” Said Baze.

 

Chirrut slumped. Body almost a liquid, dangling down the wall and onto the floor by his tongue that was still firmly attached to the kyber.

 

A fondness rose up and gave a pleasant burst of heat in his chest and Baze wondered how anyone could be scared of this ridiculous man. He smiled at Chirrut and the crystals warmed to a soft pink glow, cloudy white swirling where they were normally clear. Baze had only ever seen the kyber show two colours before. The blue-green glow that sometimes shone when they were in the caves, and the clear water droplet like clarity they took on when removed.

 

“Do you need help?” He asked. As amusing as Chirrut’s current dilemma was, Baze Malbus was not a cruel man.

 

The shape that was Chirrut Imwe wavered a little, going fuzzy and Baze had to rub his eyes to make sure there wasn’t anything obstructing his vision. Once he realised it was just more dramatics he rolled his eyes. “Chirrut. Would you like me to help?”

 

Chirrut hummed a resonating affirmative that seemed to echo through each crystal and bounced around inside Baze’s skull until he managed to shake it out. He cautiously stepped closer to see how bad a mess Chirrut had made of himself. He could see the end of the tongue twitching about a foot above his head to the right but it looped around a good third of the cavern wall before ending up there. The two sides of the fork in it wriggled independently of each other and Baze forced down a shudder. 

 

At this distance he could see Chirrut actually had three tongues. The main one, that seemed to have seriously gotten ahead of itself, and two smaller ribbon thin fronds. They were connected at the base of the main tongue, one on each side, and flickered like the tongues of the sand snakes Baze had seen out in the mesa. They were around four inches in length, dwarfed in size by the main tongue but they looked much more delicate. He wondered what their purpose was. Right now they were knotted up with everything else but Baze was going to need to start at the end and work his way back if he actually wanted to get anywhere. 

 

The crystals were slick with drool which wasn’t exactly helping matters. Chirrut had what looked like a trail of half dissolved powdered crystal trailing from one corner of his mouth and Baze decided he’d rather not ask about it. He was thankful for the gloves. All in all it took the better part of half an hour to untangle the mess Chirrut had made of himself. Chirrut kept squirming and tugging at them and being generally very unhelpful. It was tedious work and a little bit disgusting but at the very worst Baze was only exasperated at him for getting into this state in the first place.

  
  


Ẅ̻͖͗͆h̭̣̱̜͚̪y̗̥̝̻̳͍ͩͭͦ̐ͧͨ ͇̺̱̟̓̚d̦̠̜͔̈́͋̃͂̊ͭḭ̹͉̳̬̈́ͭ̏͆͆̃̚d̜̺̘͔̠͑́̽ ̈ͤ̓͐ŷ̲̹͊̎̅̈ö̜̥͈̋̄ͅu̮̮̼̹̖̫̾̋̈́̔̚ ̙̺̱̲͓̪̄ͫḧ͕̘́ͥ́ͫ̈́̒̈e̮̅͆ͫ̀ͭ̄ḷ̘͉ͪ̊ͬ͑p̞̟̤̅̈́̔͆ͫ͒ ̖̤̉̎͗̅͆ͭͫm͆͌̍ͮ̂̾e̦̳̜̥͈̮̊̉͋̆̋ͥ?̗̯͕̱̿

  
  


"The Force belongs to life. And you are a part of life. So if the Force has no problem with you, I have no problem with you either." Baze shrugged. “There are many strange manifestations of the Force. Although I would appreciate it if you could go back to speaking normally now.” He was beginning to get a headache.

 

Chirrut tilted his head at Baze in confusion and Baze shrugged again. Being whatever Chirrut actually was didn’t stop him from acting like an idiot or a child. Which was odd really. Baze wasn’t sure how old Chirrut was. He hadn’t gotten older since Baze had started sharing classes with him. They looked around the same age but he did not remember Chirrut ever being any younger than he was now. When Baze was small, Chirrut was still the same.

 

Child or idiot or untold nightmare from beyond the reaches of knowing, Chirrut was almost adorable. Even with his skin covered in eyes each of which were fixed in a look of indignation at being caught out. Overall Baze Malbus was fairly unruffled by the matter as a whole. This did not, however, stop him from reaching over and ruffling Chirrut’s short cropped hair. 

 

“You are just one more strange thing in the galaxy.” Said Baze.

 

Chirrut blinked at him with his whole body. More eyes seemed to have appeared while Baze wasn’t paying attention. Then the shadows shrunk back into him and the kyber stopped ringing and he tilted his head to the other side and let out a curious little trill of a noise.

 

"You are not afraid of me. Why?" Chirrut spoke. Baze Malbus was not as discomfited as many who heard his true voice, but he had just saved Chirrut a lot of time and effort so it was the least he could do to grant his request for ‘human’ speech.

 

"What is there to be scared of? I just don't really understand what you're doing, or why.” The cavern echoed with Baze’s unspoken: ‘But I will, one day.’

The kyber glowed brighter pink and faded to a red tinge where each facet met. “I have...never been understood before." Said Chirrut. His open mouth grin showed too much gum again. Too many teeth, always too many teeth.

 

Baze grunted, indignant. "I'll do it."

 

"You can't." It wasn’t a flippant denial, nor an arrogant one. To Chirrut it was simply fact. He was the unknowable of unknowable things.

 

"I will." Said Baze.

 

Chirrut spoke slowly, cheeks shimmering iridescent. “You...can't."

 

"All is one in the force.” Said Baze. “If I can know myself, I can know another." 

 

Chirrut wasn’t sure he had ever met anyone as stubborn as Baze Malbus, but something about his determination softened a part of himself that Chirrut had hardened over years and years and  _ years _ of the behaviour the other sentients showed him.

 

After this moment he began to relax around Baze. This man, this human, had only received confirmation of one small thing about him but he was unfazed, and still unafraid.

  
  


Baze spent even more of his free time than usual in the library over the passing months, getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of actual information compared to the abundance of useless metaphor in regards to anything that came close to resembling Chirrut.


	8. Chapter 8

Baze was deep in the archives. Deep enough that if one of the masters caught him he was going to be in a lot of trouble. He was sat on the floor, as there were no tables or seats this far in. These rows of books and scrolls and data cards were meant to be left untouched, dust thick where it covered them. Something might be taken and looked at on a rare occasion but it was not designed for anyone to study here. The records here weren’t exactly forbidden but Guardianship was supposed to be granted before access was allowed. The knowledge contained here deemed too much for the lower duans.

 

Spring was threatening and Spring meant festivals which meant Baze would have a lot less time to devote to the self imposed burden of understanding Chirrut. Sat on the floor in the dark of the depths of the archives. A portable lantern his only light source. Surrounded by piles of knowledge. He was making frustratingly little progress.

 

Every documentation he had been able to find was irritatingly vague. Plain speech gave way to flowery religion soaked language about the wonder of the force as soon as it came to actually describing what Baze suspected were creatures similar to Chirrut.  Not one single text spoke of these manifestations of the force crawling under your bed and listening to you sleep.

 

Chirrut had started up that habit again. It had taken a few weeks after Baze had initially protested. He was certain Chirrut knew that Baze had realised he was doing it again but neither of them said anything. Baze didn’t want to admit that he actually slept better with Chirrut around, even if he did dream more.

 

They were strange dreams. Other sentients would probably have called them nightmares. Baze was not scared or disturbed by what they showed him, but he was confused. He lacked context for the dreams. Lacked understanding. In the same way that he lacked those same things when it came to Chirrut. 

 

The dreams painted another world to him. Another universe perhaps. Or was it merely a reflection of this one. Was it how Chirrut saw the galaxy? Or was it where Chirrut came from in the vast unending sprawl that was the cosmos?

 

He saw great gardens and columned streets that led from the stars. Small domed villages where traders rested, bearing piquant tales to beguile those around their strange hearths built from the hearts of stars. Hearts of kyber. Kyber glowing like embers and flickering color changing flames. 

 

He saw dark ships shaped like the space between stars, filled with silent fathomless crews that could not be described save for the yellow silken masks over what he could only presume were their faces.

 

He dreamt of dwelling alone in the dark. In the cold.

 

He dreamt of others, spread out across the stars and the knowledge that you were always one but with the same crushing emptiness that signalled something lost, or at least something missing. A space inside that needed to be filled by the shape of another.

 

He saw black doorways and an endless trickle of distant steepled towns whose trees on the farther side came down near to him and wrapped their roots around his legs until he could not tell where they began and he ended. Until he was fixed in place with the tangle of gables and chimneys his only view in the dark.

 

He dreamt of someone else’s memories of a long forgotten city whose streets were paved with onyx and whose towering pillars glowed with a low phosphorescent light. Blackness on every side but made out of flowers in shades of shadow whose dark symmetries dazzled the eye. When he turned to follow them he realised he was in a cold waste of an abandoned temple and in the spiralling beauty of the galaxy above him were dark celestial faces of fury with hands raised high.

 

Right before he woke he always saw the same thing. A marvellous city carved of pure sunset with foundations of kyber. So strange and new and yet so unmistakably Jedha.

 

Baze had spent months researching both these images and Chirrut himself and found nothing. Chirrut continued to stay close to him and Baze had caught him a few more times down in the caves though never again with his tongues tied up in knots.

 

Chirrut seemed more relaxed around him, at least as far as Baze was able to tell if something like Chirrut was relaxed. Whatever it was that had happened down in the caves that first time seemed to have broken an unspoken tension between them and Baze found himself enjoying Chirrut’s company even if he was sometimes reluctant to have it to begin with.

 

Baze sighed to himself and turned another page of the ancient tome he was looking through. The title was in a script that had made his head ache to look at. His eyes tried to slide away from it. As such he had thought it a good place to look for answers on Chirrut. Fortunately the rest of it was written in aurebesh but it wasn’t making a lot of sense.

 

“What are you reading?” A familiar voice asked from behind Baze, causing him to near jump out of his skin. He took a moment to get his breathing back under control before speaking in a deadpan.

 

“Must you do that.” Baze turned but there was only space behind his shoulder. He huffed and turned back. “I better be able to see you the next time I look.”

 

The air behind him seemed to thicken and fizzle with something, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Then, the next thing he knew, Chirrut’s chin was resting on his shoulder. His head was tilted so his eyes were looking at the pages Baze knew he couldn’t actually see.

 

“What are you reading?” Chirrut asked again. 

 

Baze shrugged and Chirrut settled himself more comfortable onto his shoulder, his chest pressed up against Baze’s back. He had been a lot less willing to allow Baze his personal space lately. “I’m not sure what it is. So far not a lot of it makes sense.”

 

Chirrut wiggled where he sat. Baze was always looking for more knowledge. It was admirable. He stretched out his senses, basking in the warmth and light that was Baze at rest and let out a small chirp as the swirl of Baze’s presence in the force stretched a little closer to his own. He checked to see if there was anyone else lurking about and then, with the knowledge they were safe and alone, flicked out his tongue to lick Baze’s cheek. He hummed happily. It tingled when he tongued Baze. Like touching the kyber.

 

Baze froze where he sat and then turned slowly to look at Chirrut in outrage and annoyance. Chirrut crossed a lot of what most sentients would consider to be lines of propriety and politeness but he genuinely seemed not to realise. This was a little far even by Baze’s very patient and accepting standards.

 

He stared at Chirrut with narrowed eyes for a moment and then licked his nose.

 

The edges of Chirrut’s body wavered, almost like smoke or mist. Little flickers of green light or flame just on the edge of seeing caught Baze’s eye for a moment before they vanished and Chirrut was unnaturally still. Baze could not even detect him drawing breath.

 

Chirrut had known baze malbus was different, was intriguing and interesting and fascinating but he hadn’t thought he could be this. Chirrut squirmed. He would need to pay closer attention. He would need to reach out to him in the force more. He would need to test the boundaries between them. He might be the purpose Chirrut has been sent to seek. Chirrut felt like he was over flowing

 

Baze screwed up his face. “Bleh. You taste like crystals.”

 

“How-how do you know.” Chirrut stammered and shivered. Still processing what had just happened.

 

Baze rolled his eyes. “Sorry you taste like the crystal smells. Better?”

He was not in the mood for pedantic things when his tongue had gone strangely numb from Chirrut’s skin. Little shadows writhed beneath where they both sat. “See? You don't like it when I do it."

 

Y͕̬͙̳͖͚o̳͈͑̒ͪ͛ͤu͕̟̲̗͂ͭ ͕̻̪̀c̗̣͍ͤ͐ͧ̑á̗ͧ̽n͕̜̲̘͓͛ ͎̞͇̍̓̈́̒̅̋l̿ͪ̑ͤ̈́́i͓̗cͫͥ͗k̙̭̞͓̖ͅ ̩͖̫͈͈̍̄ͩ̍̄̃̏m̩̣̟͚̱͎͖ͧͪ́̍eͤ̌ͬ̋͆ ͍a͛ͧͨͥ̊͐̆s̙͚̭͖̠̦͋ͦͯ͋̋ͅ ̿̒̓m̠̤ͥ̋ͤü̠̰̘͓̗̒͊͋c̻̄͊̚h̳͈̱̮̥̐̍̃ ̤̝̜̹ͮ̆̇̓̇̑̚a̘̙̫͖̻͒ͤ̆̐̄ͤ͋ṣ̻̖͎̜̦͓̂ ̺̹͙̪̪͇̹ͬͣ͛̄̆̚y̙͙̱̹̹͔̔͐̾̐̋̔o͇͗̽̈́ȗ͊̆͑͐ͣ ͚̣̱̦̳̖͛̊͒̍ͭ̚l̈ͬ̏̋͛ͥ͋i̲͚̓̊̐͛k͖̼̜͕̺̈ͅȇ̈́ͯͩ.̟̬̃̈̓̌̓

 

Chirrut’s mouth hadn’t moved. Words falling into place directly into Baze’s head again.

 

Y̠̜̐͌̊̀ͮ̉oͮͮ̎ͫ̇̇u͚̪͂ͥͬ͗ ̼̮̺̝̲ͥ̀ͭͩͫͮͅc̳͖̭̭̟ͪa̳̱͍̅͋͒̓͗ͫ̚n̮͎̮̺͓̾̌̍̓̃ͫ̚ ̺l̦̥̙̙͎̂͐ͭ͑͌ͅì̗̈̅̅ͫc̳̝͈͕ͨ͊k͍̹̼ͪ ́̒͌ͭ͂ͬm̠͙̜͇e̜̰̲ͧ̈ͩͩͧ ̻ͧ̍ͪa̮̲̹̥̳̘̣ͥ̋̃̾̅̚̚n̥͇͙̲͚̪̜y̹̤̰ͣ͆͐͑̉w̦͎̙̱̞̣̞̐͆͌̈́̒͒͋h͔̬͓̟̎̈ͩ̏ͪ̄é̯͚͍͖̦ͮ̉̽ͤ̂͒r͚̜̥͙̫͖ͥ̿̇ͮe̤͔͈ͩ̑ͦ̊ͥ

 

Baze scoffed. “Gross, no thanks.”

 

Chirrut seemed to deflate a little. He spoke normally this time, lips moving and words coming out of his mouth, “If I do this really impressive thing that humans can't do will you be swayed and then lick me?"

 

Baze shut the book in his lap, quietly resolved to the fact that he wasn’t going to get any more research done.

 

His tongue was never quite the same, he noticed, after that day. After that lick.

"How can anyone drink this?" He asked noticing for the first time the bitter and acrid tang of the tarine tea. It was sickly and medicinal though he could only ever remember it being bland before.

 

"If you eat me you gain my powers," Chirrut said solemnly, sitting next to him in the dining hall and sending wriggling shadows towards anyone who looked like they wanted to disturb them. “Just like with humans."

 

"What?” Said Baze after forcing himself to swallow another mouthful. “Chirrut, you don't eat humans."

 

Chirrut wiggled and then, lightning fast, flicked out his tongue and licked Baze’s neck before running off laughing. As he passed by the other acolytes sitting at the long benches they shuddered and huddled together. Strange wavering forms dancing before the eyes of some, visions of darkness and coldness. One unfortunate Cathar sent into a world of heat and explosions and the sound of blaster fire but over it all the repeated mantra. ‘I am one with the force and the force is with me.’

 

Baze just rubbed his neck and scowled in the direction Chirrut had run off in.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chirrut licked a lot of things, it turned out. Mostly the kyber and now Baze. He put his tongue on the trigger of a light bow once and the owner had to make another because this one was gifted to the Aspect of the Force. Baze had been especially confused by all of that. Chirrut had just shrugged at him and hugged his new lightbow. Baze quietly worried to himself about how much more of a menace Chirrut would be able to make of himself now.


	9. Chapter 9

Once Chirrut became aware that Baze had accepted that his presence allowed for a better, if more confusing, night’s sleep the room became somewhat of a sanctuary for them both. For Chirrut it meant time away from the more oppressive thoughts and feelings he picked up on. For Baze it meant less chance of him getting angry at the way people treated the strange being he had come to regard as a friend. Even if Chirrut did keep licking him, and the kyber, and anything else that looked vaguely interesting.

 

Baze sighed and looked up from where he was currently lounging on top of his bed. The shadows in the room were being pulled upward toward the ceiling. Flickering lines, arcing up and painting the wall with black, ever shifting, stripes.

 

Chirrut skittered across the ceiling, the motion caused an odd scritching noise, almost like static. His tongue, much shorter than Baze remembered untangling from the cave, hung down from his mouth towards the floor, about three feet in length. Every so often the forked ends of it would twitch towards the light fixture, as if Chirrut was half tempted to lick it but couldn’t quite make up his mind. 

 

He looked ridiculous and Baze was honestly a little cross with him. "Why do you do that?" He said, frustration finally getting the best of him.

 

Chirrut stopped where he was. His limbs were spread out on either side of him and inexplicably holding him to the ceiling. He was positioned more like a lizard than a human, one of the little ones that nipped about the desert so quickly it was hard to see them when they moved. His hands and feet were flat against the ceiling, his forearms and lower legs were at right angles to his wrists and ankles, his thighs and upper arms at right angles to that, and his body connected at a right angle to those.

 

Human limbs were not supposed to bend that way. It looked wrong.  _ He _ looked wrong and staring at him for too long made something in Baze’s stomach squirm.

 

His arms perhaps could sit like that but Baze was almost certain if he tried to set his own legs at that angle to his body he would end up dislocating his hips. Baze did not consider himself inflexible but Chirrut was pushing the limits of biology at the moment. Pushed the limits of reality more often than not. 

 

Chirrut tilted his head up to look at Baze upside down with unseeing eyes. Then, he rotated his neck so that his face was the right way up while the rest of him was still upside down on the ceiling. While the rest of his body hadn’t even moved.

 

Baze blinked and tried to process how his neck could do that without breaking.

 

"Because you aren't frightened by me." Chirrut said, like it was obvious. He tried to be human for everyone else, to a certain value of tried. Other sentients were unsettled by him but human was safe and familiar and a recognisable shape. Human wouldn't cause a central nervous system to turn into sludge and bones to obsidian. He tries to be human so that his place here is tolerated by the other acolytes. Not accepted, such as he was barely accepted by the plane of existence let alone the small minds of sentients that barely understood how their own thought processes worked or even why.

 

He tries so that they do not oust him from the temple, or try to at least. As if they could succeed. 

 

He tries so the sick toxic weight and smell and taste of fear doesn’t pull him down and sedate him. So that hatred of what sentients should not be capable of comprehending does not insinuate itself from their minds and mouths into his veins and twist him into anger and action. He tries so that he does not become the horrors of ages and legends past. Those that could not adapt. Those that did not want to. Those that sought only destruction and to whom fear was an exquisite drug. He could not bear to become that

 

He did not need to try around the masters. The masters know what he is. The masters have always known. 

 

He does not need to try around Baze. Baze is not afraid.

 

Baze snorted at him and Chirrut twitched his tongue in his direction. There was only one tongue today. Baze had not seen the smaller two since the incident in the caves. Honestly though for him there was nothing to be frightened of when it came to Chirrut. Chirrut was a joke.

 

“That makes the skin on your neck look ridiculous, I want you to know that.” Said Baze.

 

Chirrut huffed, irritated. He dropped down from the ceiling and to his feet in a motion that was more reminiscent of a cat than anything else. He stood in front of Baze, what was currently passing for his hands pressed to his hips. “I’m going to be extra human. Just for you.” He said petulantly.

 

Baze scrunched up his face in annoyance. He didn’t like that Chirrut insisted on acting human around the other acolytes when he clearly wasn’t and when Baze could see nothing wrong with being whatever he was. It was the reason he’d been throwing huffy remarks at Chirrut all afternoon. 

 

He leant forward and licked Chirrut in retaliation. Hoping it would impress upon his friend his displeasure. 

 

Chirrut straightened up, six eyes shocked into opening across his collarbones. The edges of his skin flickered and wavered, almost like gas. They turned the light around him rich shades of purple and royal blue. He stood like that for a moment, entire body at attention. Then the world seemed to slip sideways for Baze and suddenly where Chirrut had been there was now empty space.

 

Baze nodded to himself, confident that he’d made his point in whatever strange tongue based culture Chirrut was from and sure he had won the unvoiced argument.

 

Down in the kyber caverns beneath the temple a high pitched buzzing screech echoed about the caves. It set the teeth on edge of those who could not hear it and those who could turned deaf for two days or lost all sense of balance for much longer. 

 

Chirrut flitted about the ceiling of the caverns. Appearing in one for a moment before vanishing only to blink into existence in another. 

 

Regardless of his attempts to be human people usually felt fear around Chirrut. The acrid smell permeating everything. Baze never smelt that way. He was sweet and spicy and perfect. He was not afraid of Chirrut. Spoke to Chirrut. Treated Chirrut as a person. Treated Chirrut as an equal. 

  
He smelt so, so good and he had  _ licked _ Chirrut. So Chirrut flitted about, vibrating with happiness.


	10. Chapter 10

He hangs around Baze more and more after the licking incident. He doesn’t want to bother him overly much. Not the wonderful man who smells of sweet acceptance and reciprocated his lick. His edges still blur off into the unfathomable infinite when he thinks on it. So he keeps to the shadows, hidden from human sight. hovering over Baze and breathing wispy warmth over his neck. 

 

A few weeks of shifting shadows and Chirrut shaped breezes are enough to test Baze’s patience. He is not oblivious and does not appreciate being treated as such. The next time too sweet breath brought sweat drops and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up Baze waved him off, sensing him.

 

"I know you're there."

 

He always knows when Chirrut’s there and something inside Chirrut swells with joy at the thought of it. There is no one,  _ no one,  _ like Baze. He shivers into existence, the shelves of the archives twisting and warping against physics that should not exist. Solid again he leans forward, head on Baze’s shoulder and scents him lighting. “You smell good.” Chirrut sighed happily, Baze was still not afraid.

 

Baze frowned knowing that Chirrut would provide more than enough of a distraction to prevent him from getting any research done. That said, if there was one thing he had learned over the passing months it was that there was an easy way to make Chirrut vanish. At least for a little while. It was convenient for when Baze was busy or Chirrut was being especially annoying or headache inducing. 

 

Baze looked at Chirrut over his shoulder for a moment before raising an eyebrow. He gently took Chirrut’s hand, ignoring the fact that it didn’t even feel the same shape as it looked let alone the same texture, raised it slowly in front of his face and licked a broad stripe across the palm.

 

Chirrut froze for a moment, made an odd buzzing noise and then  _ dissolved. _

 

Baze nodded to himself and went back to reading.

 

Chirrut spiraled, mind reversing and turning itself inside out and back again. Falling head first through the black abyss and void into a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained stone altars that each formed great black doorways of the gods and their crawling chaos. 

What he knew was the gossip of distant valleys. He was in the cold waste and where the many bridged oilslick river flowed drowsily. Those things that gibbered his message to him rapidly and explicitly, shambling and rattling were not there. The night gaunts that licked their excessively wide lips, like his, and glared hungrily had left and all he could see were terraces mellow lights peeping out from the north before he floated back into the galaxy. Back into reality and Jedha and peace. 

 

He was so in love.

 

That realisation carried him back to his rooms and he sighed as he folded on to the nest of pillows that he called a bed, for the rare moments that he slept truly. He turned to face the wall with a smile but was looking far beyond it. Was looking at Baze and his books and the peace he had found in him.


	11. Chapter 11

Later in that morning Baze found himself spitting out his, formerly, favorite Chav tea in utter despair. It tasted  _ horrid. _ He should never have licked Chirrut this much. The tarine he could live without but this was too much.

 

He scowled his way through the rest of the day and by dinner everyone was avoiding him as much as they did Chirrut. He looked sideways at the strange entity that was his friend. He had sat down, or possibly just started to exist, next to Baze without him noticing and was now sniffing him again with a contented smile.

 

Baze concentrated on trying to enjoy, or at least finish, his dinner with a mouth that everything now tasted very strange in.

 

Chirrut smiled at him, all teeth, with that strange shimmer across his cheeks again. Their fellows at the next table shuddered. Soon, they thought, soon it will eat Malbus and that will teach him to speak to such things. 

 

Baze looked at him and, knowing as much as he did about Chirrut, wasn’t going to stand for whatever new nonsense this was. "You think you're going to get to eat me but you're wrong." Said Baze.

  
Chirrut's shape shivered before he laughed. It was a strange sheepish giggle that Baze couldn’t really place the tone of

 

"I wanted to eat you, but the force has other plans." He said, cryptic as always.

 

Baze scowled intensely before deciding that, seeing as he already couldn’t taste things properly, his tongue couldn’t get much worse. He put down his steam bun and bit Chirrut’s arm in petulant response. 

 

Chirrut screamed.

 

His head tipped back and his too wide mouth open and too sharp, too too many teeth glinting in the light. It was a strange almost fizzing sound it was so high pitched and the other acolytes clapped hands over their ears to block it out, or over their mouths to keep from losing their dinner.

 

Baze snorted. “Yeah. You're real terrifying.”

 

Chirrut quietened but was visibly shaking. Baze did not know what he just did. He did not realise what such an action meant to things like Chirrut. Eyes and appendages were coming into existence under his clothes and Chirrut was desperately trying to push them back under control. 

 

Not now.

 

Not in front of everyone.

 

Parts of him that even  _ he _ didn’t know could throb are throbbing. His cheeks and chest had a rainbow shimmer across them almost like glitter as he blushed furiously. Baze couldn’t know how  _ sexual _ that action was to Chirrut, and he knew he shouldn’t but Chirrut desperately wanted Baze to do it again. 

 

He forced a glare on his face before turning to his friend. “You  _ bit _ me.” Said Chirrut, even as he was yelling internally for Baze to  _ please _ bite him again.

 

Baze just snorted at him again and moved on.

 

Chrruts face fell and he tangled what currently passed for his hands together under the table.

 

“You still haven’t told me what you are.” Said Baze once he’d managed to force the rest of his dinner down. The bite hadn’t actually made things worse but he supposed that was because it had been through Chirrut’s clothes. Baze was more annoyed than he felt he should be by Chirrut’s continued silence on the matter of who or what he was.. Chirrut was his friend or at least he hopes so. Friends shared their lives with each other.

 

He liked Chirrut, despite all the nonsense he got up to. He was fun, he was funny, he thought  _ Baze _ was funny. Baze found he quite liked all those things. Strange galactic horror or not.

 

"If you're going to be a guardian of the Whills didn't you ever wonder what the Whills were?" Chirrut said.

 

“If you're one of the Whills,” Said Baze. “Then why are you going to be a guardian yourself?"

 

"Stupid.” Chirrut’s voice echoed around the consonants which was not something Baze thought should be possible. “The Whills are a  _ concept _ ."   
  


Chirrut grinned just a little too wide with his many teeth. "If you lean very very close I'll tell you why. But I have to whisper it."

 

Baze grimaced and leaned over, suspicious that he already knew what was coming. Sure enough Chirrut tongued his ear and darted away, screeching with laughter.

 

When he edged back closer Baze shoved him hard with his shoulder but Chirrut just melted back against him again in a way that was far to liquid too even begin to pass for human. Sometimes he thought that Chirrut had stopped trying. So long as Baze was around and didn’t care, he didn’t seem to work too hard at the human thing for the benefit of their duan mates anymore.

 

There was a lot of whispering, as there always was when they were together. People assumed bad things about Chirrut and Baze seemed now to be included in all this. For the most part he ignored them all now, preferring the company of his friend. Just as Baze was about to take his tray up an acolyte approached him holding a loth cat. Baze looked at him blankly. Then he looked at the loth cat. Then back at the acolyte before shrugging in a manner that seemed to demand an explanation. 

 

“Hi Baze", He said determinedly not looking at Chirrut. Baze is sat and began to glare. The acolyte had a forced smile and was sweating. He looked stressed as he petted the loth cat under the chin. It purred and suddenly Chirrut stiffened and excused himself.

 

He waited until he was vaguely out of sight at which point he flickered out of existence and back to Baze’s room. 

 

Baze stared in the direction he had walked off in. 

 

The acolyte looked at Baze, significantly more relaxed. “You should get one of these,” He gestured to the loth cat. “It will keep  _ that _ away. They say it doesn’t like the sound they make when they are contented and I think that just proved it.” He smiled and Baze felt himself getting angry. 

“Get one and it won’t bother you again.” He said.

 

Baze stayed quiet for half a minute as he tried to contain his emotions. Then he spoke, one short clipped syllable that betrayed his disgust. "He."

 

"Sorry?" said the acolyte.

 

"He." Said Baze, with a look of absolute loathing. "He. Not it. He. And he was  _ not _ bothering me." Then he took his tray to the kitchens and stomped off to find Chirrut.

  
  


Later, once he had managed to track Chirrut down, Baze discussed the matter with him. Really he should have looked in his own room first, Chirrut always ended up in there eventually. Traipsing around the temple had worked off his anger to some degree but that had only meant confusion was left in his wake. 

 

"I swear I saw you petting that exact same creature not five hours earlier." Said Baze.

 

Chirrut just shrugged.  "They were being mistreated." 

 

Baze blinked for a moment. “What” Said Baze.

 

"In the city, on this moon in general people use them for things but don’t look after them. There were so many starving on the streets and unhappy and they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve any of it.”

 

Chirrut looked upset and whilst Baze had never yet hugged him he wanted to now. Instead he held himself back for Chirrut to finish the story. 

 

“So.” Said Chirrut. “Every time someone treats one well, every time they purr I act scared and leave. It took 6 months for the city to be filled with happy fat creatures instead of abused ones." 

 

Baze massaged his temples. It certainly did explain why he’d been seeing more and more of the loth cats in the city. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

In the weeks that followed Baze realised it wasn’t just the city that had more of them. It was the temple too.

 

The cats seemed to show up in empty rooms they couldn't have possibly been in in the temple somehow. Chirrut plays with them there to keep up the illusion that he’s warded off by them.

 

The loth cats are surprisingly unafraid of him and headbutt and nuzzle him. The rub up against his legs and curl up in his lap. Some of them go as far as washing him. They seem to know somehow that he is the reason they are healthy and well fed and petted frequently.

 

They seem to think of him as a large, strange fellow loth cat. Chirrut pets them and nuzzles them and breathes sweet secrets over them until they are a little bit otherwordly themselves.

 

Those ones stay in the temple from then on. Not wanting to stray too far. 

 

They like Baze too, when he finds them. Rubbing up against his legs and purring loudly before fizzling out of existence and showing up on the other side of the room. They make Baze smile for some reason. They are soft and gentle and happy creatures despite their new strangeness. They remind him of Chirrut, who for all intents and purposes isn't that far removed from loth cat like behaviour anyway and was kind enough to care for the cats even though he had no real reason to do so.


	12. Chapter 12

The other initiates don't talk much to Baze anymore. He’s the ‘strange one’ who hangs out with Chirrut. The one who's friends with the Entity. There are whispered rumors about why this is. Hushed secrets of sacrifices and payments and the strange doorways in the city. The most mundane and the least cruel of the acolytes simply entreat that it must be his devotion to the force.

Chirrut smiles too wide and coils the shadows around him as he listens to them all. Safe in the knowledge that he likes Baze for his own reasons. For his acceptance and his kindness and his sweet sweet smell untainted by fear.

The licks keep happening, Chirrut unable to contain his affection on the slightest chance of it being returned. Baze spends his time lamenting over his tongue which still tastes things strangely and fizzes on occasion when Chirrut is close and especially happy. It’s very, very weird. Late at night Baze hears whispers in that ear that chirrut tongued, even when he presses it in his pillow. He cleans it out good and proper but even after that he thinks he hears mutters for weeks. Eventually the sensations do fade. It gives him hope for his newly sensitive tongue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The masters kept a close eye on both of them. It was strange to them to see a human boy so often next to the creature. They worried that he would anger it. It was time to step in.

After breakfast and during one of Baze’s free periods one of the masters took him aside. He was ushered into one of the many meditation rooms. This one had a floor of soft, fine sand and intricate carvings stretching up the walls. The master lit a cone of incense, the smell airy and light, calming. Then they bade Baze to sit.

He sank down into a plush cushion on the opposite side of the low table to the master and waited patiently. It was not often that he was asked for private discussions.

“We are concerned Brother Malbus.” They intoned, voice deep and smooth and solemn. “You are often around...Brother Imwe.” It was obvious from the tone that it was not quite the phrasing the master wanted to use but had no choice but to given the present company.

Baze felt anger welling up in him again. First their fellow acolytes and now the masters, he thought they at least treated Chirrut with some measure of respect. He tried to tamp down on it. He couldn’t explode at a master the way he did at a Brother but the temptation was very strong.

“Brother Imwe is a very valuable member of this temple.” The master said and Baze felt the anger in him begin to ebb, confusion trickled in to fill the gap. “He deserves respect.” They said. “You should not force your company on him.”

Baze paused and tried to adjust to the mental shift required. This was the opposite direction to the one he thought the conversation was going in. “Chirrut is my friend.” He said, a little hesitantly. “Most of the time he seeks me out. I don’t think anyone could find him, if he didn’t want to be found.”

The master blinked slowly and tilted their head. “He finds you?”

“Yes.” Said Baze.

“You consider him a friend?”

“Yes.” This one he answered more firmly. “Even if he does keep licking me.” He muttered the last part under his breath but it was obvious the master had heard him. They sat frozen, still enough that Baze glanced down to check they were still breathing. Minutes passed and he began to wonder if he had broken them.

“He...licks you?” Asked the master.

“Yeah.” Said Baze. “All the time, really. It...was a little annoying at first but I think that’s just what he’s like.”

The master nodded, a pleased look on their face. “That is fine then. Fantastic. As long as you are...friends.” They rose from their own cushion and began a slow walk towards the door, robes swishing across the sand.

Baze hesitated for a moment then stood. “While I have you?”

The master paused and half turned back, head cocked to the side in curiosity.

“I don’t think I’m the one that needs pulling up for not giving Chirrut respect.” He squared his shoulders and tilted his chin up. Prepared for verbal combat again.

“Um?” Said the master.

“The way the other acolytes treat him is appalling.” Said Baze. “The things they say.”

“Brother Imwe has never made us aware there was an issue.” Said the master.

“He shouldn’t have to!” Said Baze. “He deserves to be treated better. One of the first things we are taught to to treat people equally regardless of species or gender or where they came from before the temple. How can anyone reach peace in this place when they fill it with such hatred.”

The master thought for a moment. “We will confer with the other masters and meditate on this matter Brother Malbus. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.” Then they turned back towards the door and calmly left. As their careful measured steps began to echo the corridors, moving from the rooms soft sand to the stone of the rest of the temple, the master’s thoughts cycled. Knowledge being brought to the forefront and examined before being discarded or kept for comparison. The entity licked things that were powerful in the force, at least so it was believed. So it was recorded in the temple annals. The entity licked things that it considered to be significant to it. The master smiled to themselves as the knowledge brought them to their conclusion. The temple of the kyber was truly blessed. Not only did they house an embodiment of the force but that embodiment may just have found its mate. Of course, they could be wrong. Perhaps it and Brother Malbus were merely friends. Time would tell and if there was one thing the masters were good at it was waiting.


	13. Chapter 13

Baze’s tongue remained as sensitive as every. The whispers in his ear may have faded but this showed no indication of stopping.

Everything tasted overpowering. He couldn’t even look at a mug of chav without grimacing which was his own personal nightmare at this point. Eventually he reached his limit. Time to do something drastic.

"Fix it." Said Baze.

Chirrut stared at him with two sets of eyes. "There are people who meditate a thousand years to gain the senses of a guardian."

“The taste of a guardian?" He said, incredulously. Chirrut wiggled.

“You’re not even a guardian!” Said Baze. “We’ve already talked about this!”

"What do I taste like?" Asked Chirrut, attempting to look innocent and failing.

“Oh no you don't. I can barely enjoy my rice as it is." Grumped Baze.

“Baaaaaaze." He whined.

“I told you when I did it, you taste like the kyber smells.” Baze said.

Chirrut wiggled again, uncertain. He was happy that he tasted as good as kyber but disappointed that Baze did not lick him again. He longed for Baze to lick him back once more. Longed for Baze more than he wanted to admit, but was not sure his friend understood. Wasn’t sure Baze felt anything but friendship for him. He pouted.

It looks ridiculous. His teeth were clearly not designed for him to be doing that with his face.  
Baze sighed and rolls his eyes. “Will this make everything stop tasting awful?”

Chirrut nodded.

“Alright.” Baze sighed. “Alright, but only if you can promise that chav isn’t going to taste bad anymore.”

Chirrut squeaked, and briefly manifested eyes on his arms before shoving them back under control. “I promise.” He had to focus to not speak directly into Baze’s mind. This could be his chance. Baze couldn’t possibly misinterpret such an intimate act.

Chirrut flicked out his tongue, sinuous and to Baze’s relief much shorter than he’d seen it be previously. He was glad they were doing this in his room, rather than in the dining hall where most of their ridiculous interactions tended to take place. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what the other acolytes would say about this. It seemed a strange thing to do, even between friends and whilst Baze was at the point where he’d do just about anything to fix his tongue he still felt as though he was about to cross some unspoken boundary. This was going to change things but, regardless of his initial reason, there was a part of him that welcomed that change. A part of him that had been rearing its head more and more when Chirrut was around.

Baze leant forward on his bed and tentatively touched his own tongue to Chirrut’s. It was warm and soft and wet for a moment. Then Chirrut shuddered and let out a squeak before fizzing out of existence with a rushing gasp of air coming to fill the space he had occupied.  
Baze was shocked. A sick sinking feeling filling his gut. Had he hurt Chirrut, had he upset him. He had vanished before but not like that. What had he done.

Just as the panic was beginning to really set in Chirrut fizzled back into existence. He manifested slowly for once. All smoke and hazy edges as he slowly reformed. Baze relaxed as he did so. He had been so worried that he’d done something bad to his friend with what was he supposed almost a kiss.

Chirrut’s motions were slow even when he had managed to fully coalesce into a person again. He couldn’t believe they’d touched tongues. “I had no idea you wanted to do such dirty things to me."

"What?" Said Baze.

Chirrut vibrated so hard he went blue at the edges. Baze blinked back at him.

“You’ve been trying to stick your tongue in every crevice you can reach on me and you think I’m the dirty one?” Asked Baze.

"That thing. You did. I know you're not scared of me, but-" Chirrut cut himself off with a shiver.

Baze frowned at him and wiped his tongue. It didn’t taste bad anymore. Chirrut had held up that end of the bargain, but it was playing memories of a sweet ice he had when he was small. Of little cakes on his birthday. Good tea on a cold night. A phantom loop of pleasant things. He wondered if it would wear off or if he was stuck with this now. He supposed that at least he was tasting nice things. It was a definite improvement over before. It was also doing strange things to his stomach though and he wasn’t quite so nonchalant about those.

Part of it felt achy from everything tasting so nostalgic but the rest of it mimicked that little flip his stomach did when their tongues touched. That little drop that was the thrill of adrenaline as he did it.

It wasn’t unpleasant though. He’s not quite sure about that little adrenaline spike but the rest was more than manageable. It was strange really. It wasn’t as though Baze hadn’t licked Chirrut before. Yet he found he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About their almost kiss. It bounced around his head for the rest of the day. And the day after that. And the day after that.


	14. Chapter 14

After a few days of replaying his childhood with tastes Baze gave in.

“If I kiss you again, will my taste go back to normal?" Even though they didn’t really kiss the first time. He took care to stress the normal part this time as it seemed as though he hadn’t been specific enough before.

Chirrut practically turned into a puddle. His form wavering and blurring in a way that had Baze raising a whispy eyebrow at him. Chirrut hummed and looked away. He reached out with his senses to see if there was anyone else lingering around this part of the temple but they were utterly alone.  
He reached out to Baze through the force but still sensed no fear or malice. As always Baze’s presence was gentle and light, sweet and calm, fresh and soothing. The feel and taste of it unknotted all the wound up emotions and worries inside of Chirrut. He felt his form, beyond sight, stretch and relax. The galaxy hummed around them. Something was building on the distant horizon, something that made the void sing with displeasure but for now there remained balance and peace and Chirrut let it sink into his very essence before answering Baze.

"If I say no, would you do it again anyway?"

Baze’s annoyance softened and a few things slide into place in his mind. He thought about every stomach flip he had relived in the past week and every moment he and Chirrut have shared over the past two years. Every halo of colour around Chirrut, every resonance of kyber or wavering of his form. He smiled, feeling a little more nervous now, but it changed nothing between them.

As far as Baze was concerned. None of it did. They had been ‘ChirrutandBaze’ for a while now, if he was right then maybe that meant just a little bit more than it did before. “Yes.”

Chirrut looked like he might cry if that was something he is capable of. Baze pressed their lips together, gently until Chirrut whimpered and opened his mouth.

Kissing chirrut was not something he had considered before the earlier tongue touch but it had been something his mind had been circling around ever since. It was better than he thought, Chirrut’s tongue and shorter tongue tendrils much more pleasant in texture and sensation wrapped around Baze’s own tongue.

He felt lightheaded, floaty and warm and soft. He was suddenly struck by the urge to spend the day curled up on his bed with food and good tea and perhaps Chirrut’s strange eldritch hugs. Then a shiver of heat ran through him. Chirrut dissolved with a scream, and Baze sat staring at the spot he had been in.

It would be fine though. Chirrut always came back. So Baze waited. And waited. Until the Jedhan sun sank below the horizon and the temple bells tolled time to sleep. Until in the pitch night one of the masters found him sitting alone in the dark and gently steered him back to his empty room


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the massive delay. Between being low on spoons and having writers block things haven't been going to well. The last two chapters are already drafted though so you wont be waiting too long now.

The days passed slowly.

 

Chirrut hadn’t returned by the next morning, or the one after that, or the one after that. Baze’s tongue had gone back to tasting food as he knew it and while he savoured his first cup of chav, it was a bittersweet moment.

 

He took to wandering the streets of Jedha, looking for Chirrut. He had even tried approaching the doorways but each attempt only ever led to him being turned around and guided off by some unseen force. He hoped it was Chirrut, but if that was the case then why did he not show himself. Why did he not let Baze know he was alright. Why did he not let Baze know he was at least alive.

 

One night, when the emptiness in his room had been oppressing and unbearable, Baze found himself in winding alleys of Jedha’s underbelly. It was a rough place to be at the best of times. The dead of the Jedhan night was far from that.

His feet trod through streets that had been walked by a hundred thousand sentients for a hundred thousand years but he remained alone. His chest ached from it.

Baze sighed. Another dead end, and no trace of Chirrut. He turned to make his way back out of the dust covered alley and found his way blocked.

Two men lounged against each wall of the alley, a third stood between them. The dark grins on their faces showed they had no intention of letting Baze past.

“I didn't think they let the monks out after dark.” Said the one on the left.

“Never know what nasty sorts might prey on them. Poor, defenseless things.” Said the one on the right.

The one at the mouth of the alley laughed and motioned the other two forward. As they advanced on Baze he said, “Why don’t we show him a little hospitality.”

 

Baze shifted himself into a zama-shiwo stance with a roll of his eyes. He might not be a Guardian yet, but he was far from defenceless. Although, three on one weren’t great odds.

 

As they got within striking distance, and Baze was deciding which one would be the easiest to put down, there was a deafening screech.

 

Restless, distorted, horrifying. It echoed in through the ears and became trapped in the subconscious. It tapped into the primal instincts, that basic unthinking part of the mind that was directly wired into survival.

 

The men froze, wide eyed and twitching, and looked around in confusion. Then, from out of the wall, the shadows came. Creeping and coalescing into a more solid form, all eyes and teeth and incandescent radiance in unknown colours that spoke of pure rage.

 

G̼̳̠̰̑ͧͥ̃Ê̪͙͕̙ͪT̰̼͔̣̦̲̟͖̭ͤ̃̿ͣ͊̿ ͕̂̀A̜͚̭͓ͥͪ̾̏̉̐W̻͔̺ͨ͗ͥ̾A͇̭̺̰̹͙͈̺ͫ̓Y̹͕͇̜̯̮̼̖͂̆̉̌̇͊ ͓̼̥̤͔̖͔͕ͣ̈ͩ̆F͉̞̱͊͋͛͒̽̾R̩̿͊̈̆O͎͉ͣM̯͎̯̱̬͒̿ͩ̍̚ ͍̣̝̫̊͊̐ͭͭ̓̉͒͗ͅM͙̮̅͐Y̦̟̐̋ͭͦͧ͑͊ ̝̫͔͍̗̰ͬH͚͉̦͚̳̳̭̺̊̑̾ͥͯ̌̈́U̲̰̅̑ͯ͌̂͗̍S̪͔͉̣̳͕̲ͭ̋̈̋̏̏͆͂B̘̮̗̬͎͙͕̌͊ͫ̈́̂A̗̹͎̦̖͂̆ͧN̰̩͍̘̟̬̐͑ͮ̂̈̇ͮD̪̟̙̥͕̗̺̲͂̀ͨ͌ͩ̉ͩ

 

This time bypassing the ears and thundering directly into their skulls. There was the acrid, bitter scent of urine as the men screamed and fled.

 

The entity that was Chirrut Imwe seethed, shadows lashing around his human form. How dare they try to lay their hands on Baze. He stood like that for a moment before strong arms wrapped around him and pulled him against a broad chest.

 

Baze rested his head on top of Chirrut’s. “Don’t ever do that again.” He rumbled.

 

Chirrut blinked with his whole body. “Defend you?

“Leave.” Said Baze.

 

Chirrut let out a little trill of contentment and relaxed back into the embrace.

 

After a few moments Baze shifted his weight, conflicted. He was happy that Chirrut was safe and here, but his mind kept circling around what he’d screamed at the thugs.

 

"What did you mean, Husband?" Said Baze, quietly.

 

Chirrut went unnaturally still for a moment. “Touching tongues...it’s a married thing.” He sounded uncomfortable with the words. “Not that I’m old-fashioned or anything. I mean...if you don’t want to-”

 

Baze cut him off with a snort of suppressed laughter. “Right, like you married those crystals.”

 

All the strange shadowy parts of Chirrut faded as he shrank down into himself, closing off. The edges of him began to go pale and flicker.

 

Baze stepped back in shock and then turned Chirrut around to face him. “But all we did was kiss." He paused for a moment trying to process the knowledge before a thought struck him and he frowned. “Chirrut have you been flirting with me, or...or courting me or something by _licking me_?!”

 

Chirrut huffed. “Obviously you lick the things you like, Baze. Even if you don’t have tentacles.” Chirrut paused for a moment. “Wait, what do you mean _only_ kissed?” He tilted his head, perking up. “You want to do more things to me?”

 

Baze flushed but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt about Chirrut, but he knew he had missed the strange being terribly when he was gone.

 

Chirrut’s edges flared bright and brilliant for a moment as he vibrated. He let out a high pitched keen and careened happily up the wall of the alley, tongue flapping behind him.

 

Baze crossed his arms and silently fumed. “You can’t just tell people you’re married. You have to _ask_ them.” He whined.


	16. Chapter 16

“Chirrut come back here!” Baze shouted up as Chirrut scaled higher and higher up the side of the building. “Chirrut, you get down from that wall this instant don’t think youre getting out of this!” 

 

Chirrut turned his head, only his head and that had not stopped being at all unsettling as the rest of him was still spread out like a spider or a water skating insect on the wall. He tilted it to one side, examining Baze for a moment, and then he was off. Darting quickly up the rest of the wall and onto the roof.

 

Baze cursed in a manner that would have made the masters very disappointed in him if they had been there to hear it. Then he took off, following Chirrut as best he could on the ground. He had to sprint to keep up, and it was a hard run. Chirrut could leap roof tops and fizzle out when he met a wall only to show up three buildings later, still skittering at speed. Baze had to follow the streets and the laws of physics. It was unbelievably frustrating.

 

Eventually Baze realised he would never catch up this way and decided to head him off at the pass. Chirrut would head to the temple eventually, and when he arrived Baze would be waiting of him.

 

He reached the steps just as Chirrut slithered out of a shadow to stare at him in shock. There was silence and stillness for a moment as they both thought through what the other would do. Then Chirrut was off again, quick as a flash, up the steps and into the courtyard. 

 

Baze followed him. Followed the trail of sparks, and the scent of ozone, and the acolytes cowering in terror in the halls. It was an easier trail than he’d hoped to get. He stood at the base of one of the temple spires, gazing up as the stones popped and cracked in strange patterns and colours that turned the entrance way almost into a mosaic. This was the work of more than one swift passage. Chirrut had come this way often.

 

With a swift apology to his muscles for the agony they’d be in the next day, Baze threw himself up the stairs. Eventually he came to a room. Large and circular, spanning the full width of the spire at this point. The stones that made up the walls, floor and ceiling mirrored the effect of the entrance way. Many were warped into shapes that couldn’t possibly fit into the spaces they resided in and made Baze’s head hurt to look at for too long.

 

A bed sat out from the arcing curve of one wall, but it was barely visible under the mound of rags. Fabrics mismatched in colour and texture. There was a low table in the centre of the room with cushions fanning around it, it looked unused, barely touched. Clusters of crystals grew out of cracks in the walls and floor. Most were unknown to Baze, but some of them were Kyber. The ceiling was stained almost black, and the coloured cracks that spanned it looked almost like lightning bolts. The air in the room shifted and shimmered. There were plasteel crates piled under a window. Whatever was in them pulsed with light and colour and oozed oil-slick iridescence through the joins to puddle underneath. There was a pervasive sweet scent that he suspected was coming from them. Perhaps they were the truth of whatever Chirrut consumed to fuel him and his strange abilities. However it was he consumed anything.

 

Chirrut stood near the low table and blinked with a dozen eyes in confusion. “You actually found me.”

 

Baze panted for breath. He wasn’t unfit, not even slightly, but chasing Chirrut across Jedha at a sprint was enough to take it out of anyone. “Please don’t run away again.” He gasped. 

 

He took a couple of minutes to catch his breath before fixing his gaze firmly on Chirrut again. “Why didn’t you tell me it was that significant?”

 

Chirrut fidgeted and shuffled his feet before answering. “You wanted to go back to normal.” He said, quietly.

 

“Was it the only way?” Asked Baze.

 

Chirrut squirmed uncomfortably and Baze sighed. “Then why?”

 

“Because.” Chirrut looked small, which was almost unnatural to Baze. Between his personality and other people’s reactions to him Chirrut felt huge normally but right now he was entirely the size of the form he forced himself into, and curled in on himself defensively. “Because I thought it would be my only chance. Because you were my friend and...and I didn’t want to lose you but you didn’t seem to mind. You don’t fear me. The scent is nowhere on you. It never has been. You are kind and funny and accepting when others would shun me and ward you off. You do not try and force me to be more human, you do not admonish my mistakes or my behaviours, strange though they are to you. Because you are Baze Malbus and that is everything.  _ You _ are everything.” 

 

Chirrut let out a long sigh and with a small sad sound. “I would not have let you know. I did not wish to risk your friendship, or make you uncomfortable...but they threatened you. They  _ dared _ to try and hurt you.” His form and voice wavered. “I was so angry.” He whispered, voice still loud in Baze’s ears as though Chirrut had breathed the words directly into them. 

 

Baze nodded and walked over. He hugged Chirrut tight to him but he needed some time to process. “I...I need to think. I’m sorry. This isn’t the end of anything. Not even our friendship. I just need some space for a little while.”

 

Chirrut nodded but watched sadly as Baze left. Once he was sure he had long left the spire he gave into his instincts and sank to the ground before letting out a mournful wail.


	17. Chapter 17

Somehow the idea wasn’t actually unappealing, as much as it was a shock. After the melancholy that had dogged his every step for the past few days Baze was starting to wonder just when his feelings of friendship towards Chirrut had turned into something more.

 

He was also wondering how he had been so blind as not to notice it. He had kissed Chirrut, had enjoyed kissing Chirrut. He had lain in the darkness of his room, emptier without a comforting mass of shadows under his bed, and thought about Chirrut. Thought about whether they might do more than kiss. Thought about what else that tongue might be capable of. In the dark he had reached a hand down and brought himself pleasure with Chirrut’s name on his lips and thought it just passing fancy.

 

Just lust. Just close quarters and positive attention from someone. Thought that their strange friendship was what was important. Not worth risking over lust. Not worth losing.

 

He had been desperately naive.

 

Now, lying alone in the dark once more, he thought of Chirrut. Allowed himself to think of Chirrut without the excuse of lust, without the denial from before, and felt his chest swell fit to burst. He felt so much, and so much more than just physical. He felt like Chirrut looked when he fizzled out into the atmosphere with excitement. 

 

His room was still cold and empty without the lurking presence beneath the bed. He missed his friend. He had him back from whatever strange place he had gone off to but Baze still missed him, still longed for the distance between them to be gone.

 

After a couple of weeks Baze gave in and at breakfast told Chirrut that whilst he did need time, that didn’t mean he had to keep his distance. Not this much.

 

That night there was a comforting presence in his room. Unseen and silent but emanating a soft warmth that filled Baze with hope, and enough peace to finally have a good night's sleep.

 

If he woke up a few days later to something snuggling him from behind that has way too many limbs and felt as though it was passing through him, well that was just fine. He didn’t mention it and appreciated it while it was there.

 

It was about a week after that Baze finally mustered up the courage to make his decision.

 

He was sat on his bed, Chirrut actually visible for once as they studied and discussed the philosophies and knowledge that the masters were covering at the moment. It was a long time since that moment, before a lesson, where Baze stubbornly stared at Chirrut because no one deserved to be treated as he was. No one deserved to be ignored. They faced 6th Duan soon, although for Chirrut it was probably more of a technicality than actual progression. Baze had his suspicions about such things for some time now.

 

He regarded Chirrut, where he was lounging in what should have been an impossible position against the table. Baze stood and walked over to him.

 

"Can I see you? The actual you?" He asked, quietly.

 

Chirrut shivered to attention with an unhappy face. "You won’t like it." He said.

 

"Still." 

 

"People sometimes lose their minds." Hardly anyone had ever returned sane from such influences and such emissaries as Chirrut Imwe. The mortal mind not meant to contain his vastness of existence, the truth and meaning in his form.

  
  


"People sometimes don’t have a lot of mind to begin with.” Baze said, thinking of the pre-first Duan initiates he had to babysit on occasion. He sighed.

 

"I know you." He slowly raised one hand and cupped Chirrut's face, thumb sweeping over his cheekbone. Sightless eyes fluttered into existence in its wake. He weighed the words in his mind, had been doing so for days. They were important.  _ This _ was important. He would not make a mistake with it. He smiled softly at Chirrut and whispered, voice low. "I would know you blind. Or mad."

 

Chirrut froze, seeming to stop all pretence of needing to breathe. His feet, or what he passed for them, lifted from the floor as he hovered. Baze thought that it was somewhat unconscious. That Chirrut might have to force himself to stay grounded normally and in that instant just forgot as all of his being focused in on Baze’s words. The room flickered, rich violets and shimmering teals seemed to come off of Chirrut almost like a heat haze as Kyber-glowing tears fell from his lashes.

 

He nodded at Baze and the air across all Jedha seemed to still as Chirrut relaxed and released all attempts to hold human form.

 

It was indescribable, his true form. Language had not yet been created that could put it into words. Language, like reality itself, bent and broke around Chirrut’s form. Baze’s mind, however, did not break. His consciousness crested over Chirrut’s true self like a wave and broke only as the tide does upon the shore. Gently. Incrementally. As a caress upon the sands.

 

It was chaos. Though this should not be surprising as every word and action from Chirrut thrummed with the pulse of chaos. Tendrils stretched out from him, reaching off to things and places beyond Baze’s comprehension. It reminded him of the strange unworldly dreams he had sometimes, when Chirrut lurked beneath his bed. It cemented the fact in his mind that Chirrut was the cause. 

 

Colours and shapes that did not exist, that _could_ _not_ exist, flickered to and fro. Chirrut was ever moving, ever changing. He was translucent almost. Clouded and swirling, almost smoke or mist like as he became more concentrated or dissipated. The sunset city of Jedha warped as Baze saw it through him. It was humbling, aweing. It should have shook Baze to the core of him, but there was something comforting about Chirrut. Almost warming. A thousand eyes stared sightless back at him. A yawning abyss greeted him instead of a smile.

 

Baze stared at everything for a moment, and there was a lot of it, with a contemplative hum. Then, with a slight smirk, he raised his hand and softly booped Chirrut in the vague area where his nose used to be. 

 

Chirrut froze, the motion vibrating out from the point Baze touched along the rest of him in ripples. The form vibrated, colours swirling from cool to warm to crumbling cliffs and major chords to rich sweet caramel on the tip of the tongue and nostalgic days thinking back on a childhood picking out shapes in the clouds. Things that colours should not and could not be. Things that could not possibly be colours in the way the universe demanded they be experienced. Baze thought it was beautiful. Then Chirrut fizzled out of existence.

 

He reappeared shortly after, looking human again or at least as close as he normally got to it. He was stuck on the ceiling, scurrying around at high speed in sheer joy. No one had ever, and he had so hoped because of what Baze had said. It hadn’t stopped him from worrying, with every particle of what he wasn’t. He hadn’t needed to. Baze proved, as always, that he was the exception to every rule regarding Chirrut, and Chirrut was beyond happy.

 

He was fading out at the edges, blue and violet and almost glowing. Baze grabbed him by the robes as he circuited past and tugged until he came down. Then he wrapped an arm around Chirrut’s waist and pulled him close.

 

Chirrut cuddled into him, clinging on and burying his face in his neck. Baze stroked a hand over his head and Chirrut licked rapidly, messily, at the skin beneath his lips.

 

“Shhh.” Murmured Baze. “You don’t need to do that.”

 

Chirrut shivered and whined, clinging tighter. He did need to. Baze was his, and his, and his, and his, and  _ his _ . This proved it. So much more than anything else. Baze was mate and his and perfect and beautiful and Chirrut needed to make sure that everything else knew it. Needed Baze to mark him too so they belonged to each other. Deeper than the marriage they shared that had sent Chirrut’s mass spiralling across the galaxy in joy. Baze saw him, the real him and was still here. Still whole. Still Baze.

 

“Hey now.” Said Baze, pulling chirrut off of him as he was beginning to feel lightheaded. He always did when Chirrut licked him. Something to do with his tongue or saliva, he suspected.  “You know if you do that too much it makes it hard for me to think.”

 

Chirrut let out a trilling noise, still near vibrating in Baze's arms.

 

“Shh my love. It’s alright. I’m not going anywhere.” He knew this would have been important to prove his feelings to Chirrut but he may have underestimated things slightly.

 

Chirrut let out the noise again and Baze shook his head fondly. “If you’re going to make me dizzy anyway, you might as well do it properly.”

 

Too many eyes blinked at him, as Baze’s own flicked down to Chirrut’s lips for a second before he leaned in to kiss him. Slowly, tenderly. Chirrut melted against him as Baze coaxed his lips apart and eventually licked his way into Chirrut’s mouth. Their tongues touched for longer than Chirrut had managed before when he eventually discorporated with a scream. Baze stood there staring at the empty air with a soft smile. He sat on the bed to wait. Chirrut had come back every time this had happened so far. Baze had faith in him.

 

An hour or so later Chirrut reappeared and waved off Baze's exasperated relief.

 

"I told you.” He said. “I'm one with the force."

 

Baze smiled at him, happy to have Chirrut back, happy he wasn’t gone as long this time and pulls him back into his arms. Baze tucked his face into what, for the moment, was the juncture between Chirrut’s neck and shoulder. “You smell good.” He said and Chirrut let out a pleased, low trilling that could almost be called a purr.

 

Baze pulled him the rest of the way onto the bed and tangled them together.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

On a placid island of ignorance, watching Chirrut Îmwe float, and drift, and  _ swim _ in the midst of black seas of infinity, Baze Malbus built a boat and he did not look back.


End file.
